One of my criteria for a new CD is that it should be unique. This set satisfies
that wish easily. The Brodsky Quartet set up a project An Homage
to Beethoven to mark the Millennium and the bicentenary of Beethoven's
groundbreaking early, yet mature string quartets. They commissioned quartets
to reflect upon each of the Op 18s from composers of very different affiliations,
and the results were premiered at Cabot Hall on the Isle of Dogs
(seeS&H review,
March 1999).

The Mexican Javier Alvarez came up with a playful, very rhythmic piece,
Metro Nativitas, with short motifs in recurring shapes, named after
a Mexico City metro station, and reminders of the salsa. Tunde
Jegedesought the inspiration for his String Quartet no.2 in
Beethoven's No.2 and reggae. His idiom has minimalism affinities. The Brodskys
expected an avant-garde response to 18/3 from Karen Tanaka, but she
surprised them by keeping closest of all the composers to Beethoven's own
world in her tonal At the grave of Beethoven. She interprets its first
bars to reflect today's tensions and her second movement is a chain of
modulations, influenced by the Kosovo horrors and seeking consolation and
hope for serenity and peace. Sally Beamish came back from California
to this commission, with new 20th.C. American music
in her head, reflected in a new, lighthearted direction in her musical language.
For myself, the most satisfying reflections on Op. 18 were by the Russian
husband and wife expatriates, Dimitri Smirnov and Elena Firsova,
who came up with very different solutions. Smirnov has an Invitation
to the Dance, bringing quotations from numerous other composers to the
party. Firsova in her 10th String Quartet responds to the sadness
of the melancholy beginning of the finale of Op. 18/6.

For CD collectors of novelties, the whole of this enterprise is more than
the sum of the parts. All the new pieces are worth hearing, so long as you
don't expect six masterpieces. It is refreshing to have the Beethoven sequence
varied by the interposition of these modern reflections and the web of
interactions may be thought akin to those of linkages on the Web. The Beethoven
quartets are well played, and were recorded at The Warehouse in London, a
new home for contemporary music (see
S&H's
reviews
Sept/December 1999of last autumn's series of concerts). For
a straight alternative set of Beethoven's Op. 18 on their own, amongst the
numerous versions available, I have found the Vanbrugh Quartet's recording
very satisfactory [Intim musik IM043-4].